Chain buys WRGB, Ch. 6

Baltimore company pays $385 million for popular local station, seven others

Updated 8:35 pm, Wednesday, November 2, 2011

NISKAYUNA -- WRGB, a broadcasting pioneer that is one of the region's most popular television stations, is being sold to a Baltimore-based company that already operates across upstate New York.

Sinclair Broadcast Group is buying WRGB, Ch. 6, as part of a $385 million, eight-station transaction announced Wednesday. WCWN, Ch. 45, is also included in the sale by Freedom Communications, which has owned WRGB since 1986.

WRGB, a CBS affiliate based on Balltown Road in Niskayuna, has a long and illustrious history. It traces its roots to an effort by General Electric Co. in 1928, when the first television program was broadcast into homes of four company executives.

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The station received a commercial broadcasting license in 1942 and was owned by GE until it was sold to investors in 1983. Three years later, the station was purchased by Freedom.

The sale announced Wednesday was not surprising. Freedom, which owns 27 newspapers and has struggled under heavy debt, had been looking to sell the television stations since at least 2010, according to reports in industry journals.

Mitchell Stern, president and chief executive of Freedom, in a statement said the sale will free the company of debt and allow it to concentrate on a "transformation into a digital media company that goes beyond traditional print."

Sinclair is one of the nation's largest television broadcasters, with 65 stations in 39 markets, including Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse.

"Sinclair doesn't have a particularly strong reputation for local news," said Dow Smith, a former general manager at WTEN in Albany. "Many of their stations don't do news, or use other station's newscasts."

In 2004, for example, the company ordered all of its television stations to show a controversial documentary critical of presidential candidate John Kerry's activism against the Vietnam War. The company, under pressure from advertisers and left-leaning advocacy groups, ultimately scrapped the plan.

The sale announced Wednesday is expected to close in four to six months and is subject to stockholder and regulatory approval.